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Case Studies

When Ricoh consultants sat down with a global BPO and IT outsourcing company, they knew they needed to quickly make a positive impression. With their own technical background, the company was already sold on the idea of technology as an enabler; however, they were very demanding in terms of stated goals and objectives.

Ricoh set out to better understand the company’s requirements, beginning with a workflow analysis of their Dallas headquarters, which consisted of six buildings with over 1,500 employees. Ricoh consultants mapped 852 devices producing over 1,500,000 copies, prints and faxes per month with an employee to device ratio of 1.76 to 1. Working closely with the client team, Ricoh interviewed key departments and discussed their document workflow to uncover all possible costs. From this information, a comprehensive TCO analysis was created. The total yearly expenditure on labor, equipment and support exceeded $1.3 million dollars.

After presenting their findings and recommendations, Ricoh reduced the company’s total fleet of 852 devices to 179 multifunctional products in key locations. The new employee to device ratio was also dramatically improved to 8.4 to 1. Ricoh added technology enablers and DRMs and staff to manage the copy center, mailroom and fleet. The result was a 31.9% cost savings – over the company’s original goal of 30%.

Background

A not-for-profit, community-based hospital with 76 beds, Burnside Hospital provides premier acute medical, surgical and obstetric health care for patients, clients and their families, and has a strong reputation for its maternity care.

The hospital employs 330 people working in shifts to cover its 24 hour-a-day, seven day-a-week operation. Of the 330 employees, approximately 120 have access to a PC and 180 operate a diverse range of document management devices including five Canon monochrome Multifunction Devices (MFDs), 23 Lexmark monochrome and colour printers, and various fax machines and scanners.

The Challenge

The Canon Multifunction Devices were facing end of life and Burnside’s service contract with Canon was due to expire. With increased service calls for the devices and more frequent episodes of downtime, the poor performance of the devices was impacting the efficiency of Burnside’s medical records department and their reception desks, both of which are critical to Burnside’s daily administration and require reliable printing and copying capabilities for maintaining patient records and addressing a range of other documentation needs.

Challenge:

“The majority of our housings are black and our vendor did not have the option to print white with its digital technology” —Patrick Oltmanns, CEO

ClickFold established a strong and growing business by meeting their customers’ need for fabricated plastic components requiring single-color text and markings. In recent years, however, the increasing demand for parts with multicolor markings prompted the company to outsource their printing requirements to a local screenprinter.

“This process can be quite expensive depending on the number of colors,” says company founder and CEO, Patrick Oltmanns. “The majority of our housings are black and our vendor did not have the option to print white with its digital technology.”

Stem cells have enormous potential in medical research due to their ability to convert into specialized cell types. One day they could provide a renewable source of replacement cells for people that require organ transplants or for patients suffering from diseases such as Parkinson’s, Type 1 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.

To work towards these aims, Boston University found that it needed a controlled-cell microenvironment to manage and measure how stem cells interact with each other through direct contact and cell-secreted factors. These microenvironments required highly accurate, very robust parts with fine detail, so researchers turned to Potomac Photonics and the company’s 3D printers for assistance.

Potomac Photonics is a leader in micro-fabrication, helping customers develop miniature products and bringing them to market in areas such as medical devices, electronics, aerospace, and automotive. Potomac’s high-tech facility, located in Lanham, MD, is ISO 9001:2008 and ISO 13485:2003 certified.

ABOUT THE CUSTOMER

Sutherland Asbill & Brennan LLP is a law firm with global reach known for solving challenging business problems and resolving sophisticated legal issues for many of the world’s largest companies. Founded in 924, the firm handles matters throughout the United States and worldwide. With seven major practice areas — corporate, energy and environmental, financial services, intellectual property, litigation, real estate, and tax — Sutherland attorneys serve a diverse client base that ranges from small and medium-sized start-up businesses to a significant number of Fortune 100 companies.

CHALLENGE

With 400 plus attorneys and offices in Atlanta, Austin, Houston, New York, and Washington DC as well as available office-space in London and a partnership with another firm located in China, Sutherland Asbill, & Brennan LLP recognized the importance of developing an efficient, standardized records management system to house their vast archive of legal documentation. In 2006, Sutherland moved its Records Management function to report into its IT department. According to the Firm’s Director of Client Information and Records Compliance, “When I took over the records function it was quickly apparent that our records handling had developed in an ad hoc manner. This was a source of frustration for many of our team members and in turn was costing the firm literally millions of unnecessary dollars. We needed to develop standardized records management policies and procedures across the firm’s network of offices.”

No output strategy.
No operational efficiency.

Businesses still depend on paper to serve customers, run supply chains, care for patients, open new accounts and all the other activities that drive performance and growth.

To move and use that paper-based information, organizations rely on processes and people. When these are aligned and efficient, your entire business benefits through faster turnaround, better decisions and responsive customer service.

In 2013 Apple sold more than 170 million iPads® worldwide. With a reported 500 million iPhones® in use along with millions of Samsung® Galaxy phones and a variety of other mobile devices, it goes without saying this market is hot. Likewise, the ensuing demand for peripheral devices, such as headsets, is exploding.

Fujikon, an award-winning headphone manufacturer for over 30 years, is itself on the wild ride of the headset and speaker market for mobile devices. In a market that’s getting more competitive by the day, innovation is a must. The Hong Kong-based Fujikon is no exception, as they are constantly exploring better noise-cancelling functionality, wireless connectivity and sound quality as well as innovating more attractive products and enabling faster time-to-market. In order to survive, these components are all core demands for any major market player.

In 2011 Fujikon had to take the next step forward; they realized that their 200-strong R&D team needed to adopt new practices and technologies in order to enable faster product development. 3D printing was at the top of the list. So in June of the same year, company executives asked a team to review, test and evaluate all the major 3D printing technologies.

Working with one of the country’s largest insurance companies was a daunting undertaking, especially when Ricoh representatives learned they were competing with three of the world’s largest device manufacturers. Through a thorough discovery process, Ricoh Document Solutions and Services learned that the complexity of the company’s documents was beginning to outpace the usefulness of the existing devices and solutions.

The company’s IT Department had already implemented a competitive solution to perform network device discovery. After meeting with company executives and IT staff, however, Ricoh identified a set of business requirements that were not being met by the current solution. By implementing Ricoh’s intelligent remote management system, the financial services company gained several features, such as automatic service call generation, automatic meter billings and fleet reporting. The IT Department welcomed the change and 10 Ricoh appliances equipped with the remote management software were installed to monitor over 3,400 devices.

By working closely with company IT and business executives, Ricoh consultants also identified several areas where software customization would greatly enhance Ricoh devices. The result of these meetings led to 13 customizations to Ricoh print drivers, device management utilities and scanning solutions. In addition, the company needed kerberos authentication added to comply with in-house security policies. The result was an embedded scanning application that accommodated the necessary security feature. In addition, Ricoh added the customized software to a growing library of intellectual property to be leveraged by other insurance or financial services clients.

As their business grew, Color Ink’s customers began asking for wide and super-wide format graphics and for more complete, turnkey services. To accommodate these new requests, the company started by outsourcing to a couple of local imaging firms. The problem was that the mark-up on these outside purchases was insufficient to keep Color Ink profitable on those types of jobs. They soon realized that in order to stay competitive, they again needed to bring the printing capability in-house. By owning their own press, they could not only pass the savings on to their customers but also have more control over the results and offer better turnaround on jobs.

VUTEk Quality & Speed

After investigating its options, the company purchased its first superwide printer, an EFI VUTEk QS3200 (a 3.2-meter roll-to-roll and flatbed printer) for its high quality and speed. They also invested in the EFI Fiery® XF RIP to help manage pre-press and print quality.

Color Ink had experience with EFI’s Fiery RIP, which drove their direct-mail printing device. “Some full color variable data projects can contain forty different elements changing on each sheet. The robust capabilities of the Fiery RIP allow us to process files quicker and to continue printing while processing. For example, with Fiery on the front end, job processing of a four-color 1,000-record VDP job has, incredibly, been reduced from four hours down to seven minutes,” said Meissner.

In the sandstone cliffs circling the Valley of Bamiyan in central Afghanistan, two enormous, conspicuous niches stare out from the rock. They were once the homes of the Buddhas of Bamiyan: two colossal buddhas that monks carved out of the stone and coated with stucco. The larger of the two measured 53 meters tall, and the smaller one came in at 35 meters tall. Examples of Gandhara art, the statues, built in 554 AD and 507 AD, respectively, were reminders of one of the world’s great civilizations and were once the largest standing buddha carvings on the planet. But on March 12, 2001, explosive devices destroyed the 1500-year-old statues, robbing an already war-stricken country of vital symbols and cultural identifiers that underscore the area’s unique blend of Greek and Buddhist cultures.

Currently, an international team of restorers, architects and engineers are rebuilding the Buddhas of Bamiyan and hoping to restore some symbolic value for the Afghan citizens, and 3D Systems is helping. The restoration team is using a combination of Geomagic Studio® scanning software and a ProJet® 3D printer with ColorJet technology to prepare for the monumental task ahead. In 2009 they began planning for the reconstruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan, the chambers of which were declared a World Heritage Site in 2003. The project is funded by a group of countries and organizations, led by UNESCO (United Nations Educations, Scientific and Cultural Organization) and ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments and Sites).